Wireless communications are increasingly gaining acceptance and are being increasingly relied upon as a convenient medium to communicate many types of information, in addition to being used for voice calls. One area experiencing rapid growth is the field of ad hoc networks utilizing peer to peer communications. In an ad hoc and geographically limited environment, it would be desirable for a user to be able to transmit different types of messages, e.g., advertisements, requests, news, etc., to each of the other users located within the range of his/her device. However, a receiving user, who has never dealt with the sender before, may have no way to determine whether or not the sender can be trusted and whether or not it is worthwhile to spend time to reply to the sender's message. Note that such lack of trust among users is independent from being able to validate the signature carried by the message. In fact, a malicious user can sign and transmit, e.g., multicast, a message, and the receivers may be able to validate the signature, but this does not mean that the sender is sincere about his/her intention. Consequently, a user acting upon a received message from an untrustworthy or malicious user may end up as a victim. A similar trust problem occurs from the sender's perspective with regard to response from users whom the sender does not already know.
Based on the above discussion, it would be advantageous if new methods and/or apparatus could be developed that allow wireless devices to gather and/or exchange trust related information. New methods and apparatus that facilitate a trustworthiness determination of information communicated in a message would also be beneficial.